#Frontier, I'm breaking up with you.

The
first thing you need to know about me is that I pretty much live in a bubble.
Let me explain.

As
an Author I spend countless of hours with imaginary people. As a reader, I
spend countless of hours with imaginary people. Notice the trend? So when I’m with my family,
phones are banned and thus the internet is banned.

So
back in April when it seemed that everyone knew that Verizon was selling Fios to
Frontier Communications in Cali, Texas and Florida, I had no idea. No email was
ever sent to the account associated with the account. And I wasn’t clever
enough to go around Verizon’s website poking for emails etc.

I
found out about the sale of Fios when I tried to pay my bill. Pretty soon,
Verizon left me behind, without a goodbye; even though I thought we had a real relationship that
started when we moved back to Florida in 2011, actually our love affair didn’t
start until 2012, my bad. Still, I thought it was true love. I thought we had
an understanding. I paid on time, and in return I had a kick ass package with
BBC America included.

Alas
this wasn’t true. I felt like the dumped girlfriend on Valentine’s day. Why?
Because pretty soon I found out that my rebound lover, a.k.a. Frontier was
nothing like Verizon. The relationship built in the space of four years was destroyed, and I knew, Frontier and I couldn't ever have that. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

At
first I wondered why people were upset. It's a new relationship, I thought, there are bound to be some hiccups, I told myself. Yes, it took almost two solid weeks for
me to be able to access my account and pay my bill… but hey, they’d just done a
massive thing. They’d merged. I mean obviously in the time of technological advances, the ever mighty computers could be defeated by such a thing, right? There were bound to be teething problems and as
long as my internet didn’t suffer and I could watch BBC America, I was happy.

However,
this stage of denial didn’t last long. Internet started to be… well crap. And
then the box in my son’s bedroom, the one that housed the old Verizon
rechargeable battery started to beep at all hours. I took a deep breath and
called Frontier about the battery. They, like Verizon before them, wanted us to
pay a ridiculous amount of money for said battery. So I ordered one from Amazon
at a fraction of the cost and installed it. The new battery did nothing but beep as well.

Three
days later, it was all over.

Friday
afternoon our TV and Internet stopped working. WHAT? Yes, it was like I was 10 all over again, and was stuck in 1984.

After
calling Frontier we were told that there was an outage in Temple Terrace… we
live nowhere near Temple Terrace. I tried explaining that we had problems with
the battery, and the woman told us, not to fear, Frontier was here, or there,
fixing the outage. I asked of course about the TV, because we’d been without
internet before, but our TVs worked. “No,” The almost Disney like voice said on
the other end. “You wouldn’t have TV because your internet is out, however, we’re
working diligently to make sure that our customers have service as soon as
possible.”

And
then there was Saturday. No internet. No TV.

This
wasn’t a huge problem for my kids. One quickly got busy filming and editing.
The youngest one drew and made animals out of construction paper and loads
of tape. I spent time reading a book, and playing with some ideas, which also
included playing with my Sims' Game.

However,
my husband was more bothered than any of us by the lack of internet. He tried
dealing with Frontier. First the man on the phone was rude. Second, he
transferred him around bouncing the call from department to department, until I got fed up with the
way people were talking to him and butted in.

The
third person on the phone told him that maybe we should take the battery out.
Maybe you just need to reboot…. Maybe if you turn off the equipment…. Maybe the
battery hasn’t charged fully… Maybe, Maybe, Maybe!

Well
hell no! Enough.

You
see, I have a very short fuse. Some people blame my Spanish DNA, but
there are so many bits in my DNA from other countries (Including Italy) that I don’t want to blame
just the Spanish for my hot temper. Other people pin it down to me being a Gemini.
I might have two personalities… both of them are hot tempered. I think the
problem is that as I’ve gotten older, I just turned 42 in May, I’m less likely
to put up with bad service, especially when my husband works darn hard to earn the money
that keeps a roof over our heads and of course pays for the internet and TV. Also, after being married to this saint of a
French man for seventeen years, I’m like a lioness jumping in, butting in and
pushing rude people out of his way.

And
that is precisely what Frontier was like.

I’m
sorry Frontier, it’s not me, it’s you, it’s you, it’s you.

Once
I took control of the conversation, I asked for a disconnect. You know, I
wanted to just freeze Frontier out of my life. Some people think this is just
drastic. Well, some break ups are. And you know what; it doesn’t make them any less painful.

Pain?
You might ask. Yes, pain. I had to call back when the woman on the other end
decided that what we needed was a technician who might come on Wednesday or
Friday. I told her not to bother booking. I wanted to be connected with Sales
so I could cancel our account, she went ahead and made an appointment and then disconnected my call.

Fast
forward to speaking with two different people about cancelling and no one being
able to actually tell us how much money we would have to pay to get rid of
Frontier, because this is the state of business right now. They don’t know a
thing.

From
$200 the last girl quoted us $50, though it might be $100. It’s like abloody auction out there. Our contract would have
expired in October, and as such, we were told that we wouldn’t be charged more
than $100. Though I don’t believe Frontier, not one bit.

Why?
Well, technicians around Tampa seem not to show up for appointments. Frontier
seems to add charges to people’s bills without explanation. Also, right after
cancelling on Saturday and asking for three boxes to mail the two set up boxes
and the router… on Wednesday, we had a technician show up and … AND six boxes
showed up. You might wonder why am I annoyed that six boxes showed up when I
requested three? Well, each one of the six boxes had equipment in it.

Yup, that’s right, the
levels of incompetence reach well beyond bad telephone manners, not being able
to give you a time frame for an appointment, not being able to know that the
equipment in your house is actually faulty and that there is no outage, and
especially not being able to be transparent about their cancellation fees.

The
odyssey doesn’t stop there. Today, Thursday, when I returned home from running
errands, there was one more box on the porch, from… You guessed it, Frontier!

*throws
confetti around*

So
yes, Dear Frontier, you were my rebound love, and as such our story has
concluded, because in all seriousness, it’s not me, it’s you.